The whisky bar that’s a game changer

It’s tough to admit that there is still, after so many years of marketing to millennials, a lingering perception of whisky as elitist and an ‘acquired taste’. One needs only to read the countless Buzzfeed and HuffPost articles on the ‘26 Ways To Impress Your Boss/Girlfriend/Mates With Your Whisky Knowledge’ to realise whisky maintains an air of exclusivity. You won’t see Buzzfeed publish ‘26 Ways To Impress Your Boss/Girlfriend/Mates With Your Tea Knowledge’ any time soon. Everyone drinks tea; it has no secrets.

Brands often talk of ‘demystifying’ whisky for consumers to make it more accessible, but just how complicated is whisky, really?

Whisky drinkers – real whisky drinkers, not the ones absorbing clickbait internet articles in a bid to look intellectual or cultured – are spoilt for choice. There are hundreds of brands and styles within Scotch whisky alone, never mind the vastness of American whiskey or burgeoning – and in my opinion extremely exciting – Irish whiskey.

Imagine walking into a whisky bar or specialist retailer anywhere in the world and coming face-to-face with so many bottles it seems the walls are made from them. One section contains Kentucky Bourbon; another features single pot still Irish whiskey. Each purports unique maturation or production techniques and many have unpronounceable names. Some have ages, others don’t.

For whisky lovers it’s a haven, but if you were a newcomer wouldn’t you be overwhelmed? Where to even start?

Whisky is a flexible beast that can be as complicated or as simple as need be, offering enough variables in its production to keep the fact geeks happy, while – at its most basic level – tasting fucking great. The problem is that too many whisky bars and retailers have neglected to address the needs of the new consumer, who just wants to understand whether or not they'll enjoy the flavour of what they're drinking.

Black Rock: Whisky bar meets minimalist hip-hop den where flavour is king

That is why the opening of Black Rock in London’s Shoreditch this week is a breath of fresh air. From Tristan Stephenson and Thomas Aske, the same team that introduced progressive cocktail bar Worship Street Whistling Shop, comes a whisky bar with a twist. This is a space geared toward blowing away whisky’s complications and perceptions – gone are the Scottish tweed and hunting lodge décor in favour of a minimalist, hip-hop vibe (how very Shoreditch). At Black Rock the focus is on flavour as the core communicator.

Here it doesn’t matter whether your whisky hails from Dublin or Dufftown – if it shares the same flavour profile, it shares the same shelf. Age and price are also irrelevant in a space where the raison d’être is to actually demystify whisky in a meaningful way that consumers with zero experience can understand.

‘Our aim entirely is to simplify whisky so our guests are the ones feeling as though they’ve discovered whisky.’ Aske told me. ‘We don’t want to be too clever; everything we're doing is designed to simplify whisky as much as possible.’

Whisky aficionados are still catered for – among the bar's 250-odd bottles there may be an appearance from the guys’ personal Karuizawa stocks – but one thing is for sure: Black Rock is a game changer.  

In London at least, navigating the whisky landscape just got a whole lot easier for the newcomer.